Students from AIGA have taken game development to a new level as a team of 8 students currently in the 3^rd semester have created a game level from scratch using the Unreal Development Kit (UDK).  The team of students took about 5 weeks to complete the level.

This Game level was developed as a part of the student’s specialization. Students chose to work on an abandoned railway station called ‘PetiteCentuire’ each of the students created one part of the station. Each of their work is reviewed and assessed to help them improve their understanding of creating game levels as well as integration into game engines. Players get to play inside this abandoned station which is now taken over by mobsters.

Students presented the level to an invited audience from the industry on 6^th August which helped them understand the finer points of game development through the Q & A session. Some of the students from this team have already joined as interns at a Bangalore based game company Atman Software.

The team of students with their mentors

This project included a team, a bunch of Third Semester students - Prashanth DG, Rishi Patkar, Avik Jain, Yashaswi Shivanand, Satish Kumar, Hardik Sonegara, Dhanasekaran and Vipin Suraj. Led by a team of experienced faculty who have worked in the video games industry for more than 15 years. The Mentor & Faculty team comprised industry veterans- Joshi Mark Premnath and Uday Kiran.

Vipin Suraj Nambiar who is one of the students who has worked on this game level explains in detail the challenges the team faced and how they went about developing the level from scratch with the help of their mentors. The following citation has been provided by Suraj himself:

“The assignment task involved conceptualizing a game level that can be used in a first person shooter (FPS) for a next gen game. The challenges were weighing upon developing all the game assets and learning the engine, along came obstacles that accompany such a task. The level is called Petite Centuire. An old train station being used until the 70's and then being closed down, and French mobsters taking over the place during the 90's until today.

We started by pitching ideas to our Faculty team which was headed by Joshi Mark who was the art director for this game level. They threw in ideas of an abandoned subway station with a lab with different key elements that each student had to individually work on. Like in a game studio, there were conscious brainstorming and creative thinking sessions which helped students take bits and pieces of their ideas and built a truly wonderful game level - The French Mobster Abandoned Railway Station.

Screenshot of the platform in the game

Keeping in mind, game levels are not just visuals but need to have good game play scenarios, the Abandoned Railway Station was made up of different areas which each of the eight students had to work on and develop a playable game level using the ‘Unreal Development Kit’ in about 5 weeks. The game level consisted of areas such as the Platform, Station Master Room, Waiting Room, Basement, Washroom/Exteriors, Waiting Room, Restaurant and the Warehouse.

Each one of us had to build on the chosen area which involved working late hours researching French styles, interiors and a whole lot of railways around France. Concepts and sketches became the main objective from here on. Making a concept at the start helped students get a feel of the things to come and gave more control over the entire project.

On a parallel work on developing a detailed spec sheet of everything that each person was to create from the scale of each of the props/models to the tri-count of the entire scene and pass it on to the faculty for approval. Everything had to be in order before one could actually dive into implementing the creative into reality.

Thereafter each of us developed each asset such as props and the environment meticulously to a given texture and poly or mesh budget. Each of these game assets needed to be built using tools such as 3ds Max and Maya. Firstly modeling each object such as props, interior and exterior environment and the structures that it would contain using the concepts and references, thereafter texture the model which is to paint the surface to make it look as real as possible. Creating assets for the whole railway station is the most time consuming part and needs good planning and time management skills.

A compilation of the different locations in the game

We would often hover around the faculty looking to solve issues and queries. This was seen through the entire assignment, consulting and reviewing work against schedule which happened until the end of the assignment.

Each one of us went about modeling individual as well as common props. The whole props development stretched out for more than 2 weeks. After this was done each one marched on to take care of the respective environments that they had selected. Spending time together reviewing each area helped enrich the whole feel of the place to make it look uniform and well blended. While most of the students worked on their respective game levels moving on to the third week, a few more adventurous students headed by Honcho Rishi Patkar kept briefing students and taking them through the UDK part of our level, and also introducing special effects into the level, he was labeled Marcus Phoenix (hero from the game gears of war) of UDK. Integration into the game level and all technical aspects were overseen by the Faculty Uday Kiran, who would ensure everything ported well and showed in game as conceived as they were drawing close to the end of production.

We had to ensure all our assets such as props, environment structures had to be ported carefully into the UDK Engine/Editor. The main aim of learning the UDK engine was to familiarize ourselves with the game engine and how it works. Quality checking each prop and spotting errors before exporting helped students understand the need to follow specification right from the start. This was a great experience as some had to do the same export many times to get it right!

Seeing that everything was in place we turned our attention to lighting, which is an important part of this abandoned station level and most certainly important to every game level. Baking lighting for the entire station was re-done a couple of times to suit the concept sketches which at times took up more than 7 hours. Adding bots and their A.I (Artificial intelligence) was an interesting experience.

Finally the game level was ready to play and we launched the game level and we were proud to be part of the team who launched one of the first student game levels seen in the country.

The entire team enjoyed every moment of this challenging exercise from design to development of the game level, they just had a blast throughout the development phase.  From working long nights to the whole fun of concept making to level testing the level, went through during this short time of 5 weeks was a totally amazing learning process. To end the chapter of  ‘Petite Centuire’ ,we would like to give a special thanks to the entire AIGA faculty for helping us and getting us started on this and the team members for making all this come to life.”